Gov. Mike Huckabee is a wonderful public speaker. He's at his best when he has an audience hanging on each clever phrase and word turn.

During Tuesday's state of the state address, the governor certainly delivered his share of applause-generating one-liners, but we won't remember that speech for its oratory. Arkansans won't remember that speech for its words. Scholars won't remember the speech for its new information.

A hundred years from now, history, though, may recall Gov. Huckabee's state of the state speech as the day this state began anew.

Gov. Huckabee spoke bravely when he addressed the General Assembly. He said things that no one particularly wanted to hear but things that everyone knows to be reality. He laid out a plan for the state that would create hardships for many Arkansans but result in better days for nearly every Arkansan. He told the truth about our state, about our past and perhaps about our future.

A simple thing that, telling the truth, but few politicians do it with any degree of regularity.

Gov. Huckabee wasn't a politician on Tuesday. He was an elected leader, and he called on other elected officials to shuck their politician's garb for a leader's mantle.

The governor called for state government to restructure itself, saving money and costing jobs. He called for a couple hundred high schools to close down in the name of equity and adequacy. He called for a new way, a better way.

In the process, he noted that taking such bold steps may result in political suicide for those carrying the message and implementing the plan, but that's not the point. He encouraged legislators to follow his lead, not to win elections but to lift up coming generations of Arkansans.

We stand with the governor, ready to do whatever is necessary to ensure that this state sheds the shackles of poverty and unequal opportunity.

It was not difficult to see a new sun rising within that chamber at the Capitol.

If our representatives and senators will show the same courage as our governor, bright days are ahead.

If they fail to show that courage, if we fail to support their actions, we doom future generations of Arkansans to countless overcast days of unfulfilled potential.